Porting to other platforms

Every so often we get requests to port GRAMPS to OS X or Windows. We’ve never actually stated a policy on this, but I thought that I ought to say something.

The focus of the GRAMPS project is on Linux. GRAMPS has been ported by others to FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris and OS X (both by using darwinports and Fink). However, the development team does not run these operating systems and cannot support them.

If someone ports GRAMPS to an operating system other than Linux, the development team will support any GRAMPS related issues, but cannot support system specific issues. This is the policy we have been following for the Fink port of GRAMPS to OS X, and will we follow for other OS’s as well.

The reason I’ve decided to discuss this now is that with the 2.2 release GRAMPS will become much easier to port to other platforms. However, because it can be ported does not mean that the development team will port, package, or be able to support other platforms. These tasks will be left up to whoever decides to do the actual port.

And just in case anyone needs proof that GRAMPS 2.2 will be easier to port, here are a few screenshots of what I was able to do on a borrowed machine in just a few minutes.